1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to devices to be applied to bag handles to shield a person's hand when lifting and carrying the bag. More particularly, this invention relates to such devices adapted to be installed on plastic bag plastic film handles and on paper bag rope handles of the type found on shopping bags.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Plastic and paper shopping bags are provided with carrying handles that are uncomfortable to grasp when the bags contain heavy articles. Plastic bags are fabricated from flexible plastic film and are formed so that a pair of plastic film webs are provided as bag lifting and carrying handles, one on each side of the top of a bag opening. These webs, when grasped so as to lift a bag, collapse into thin bands of a rope-like nature. Paper bags are fabricated so that a pair of thin paper ropes are secured to sides of the tops of the bag openings to provide a pair of baglifting/carrying handles. In the case of both plastic and paper shopping bags, these rope-like handles are uncomfortable to use when a bag contains an aggregate heavy load. For grocery shopping bags, for example, a bag containing a twelve-pack of soft drink cans, or a gallon container of milk, becomes sufficiently weighty as to cause the rope-like handles to "dig into" a person's hand when the weighted bag is lifted. The handles are flexible and tend to form an arc when the weighted bag is lifted. However, when a person grasps the handles to lift the weighted bag, the person tends to make a closed fist that results in the fingers forming an approximately straight lifting channel about the bag handles. Consequently, the flexible handles, when the weighted bag is lifted, bear disproportionately against the outer sides of the person's index and litter fingers. The degree of discomfort imposed on the person lifting and carrying a weighted bag is sufficiently extreme that the bag cannot be filled to its capacity with articles that, in the aggregate, are too heavy. Clerks that fill these shopping bags know this and, therefore, often not only do not fill the bags to their capacity but, rather, significantly underfill the bags so as to avoid being criticized by shoppers.
Hand grips have been heretofore proposed for solving the problems presented by flexible, rope-like handles on plastic and paper shopping bags. However, some such hand grips are cumbersome to apply and, once applied, are cumbersome to remove. Since shopping bags are provided with two handles, on each side of a bag opening, when the two handles are brought together and confined by a hand grip device, access to the bag's interior is substantially reduced or eliminated until the hand grip is detached from one or both bag handles. Other such hand grips will not remain attached to the bag handles when the bag is set down, resulting in misplacement of the hand grip. These types of hand grips, may fall off the bag handles entirely, or become partially dislodged, necessitating their re-attachment when the bag is to be lifted again. Furthermore, the hand grips that have been heretofore proposed are often cumbersome to store in a convenient manner nearby where they must be applied by clerks. Some such hand grips are also too expensive to use in such common environments as the checkout stands of grocery and hardware stores, and similar kinds of stores where profit margins are relatively low. Because of these enumerated deficiencies in the hand grips heretofore proposed, none of these hand grips are in wide use, and virtually none of them are in use in low profit margin retail stores, such as grocery and hardware stores.